There are no roads into the last town at the foot of Macchu Picchu so you have to take the tourist train. It's pretty expensive too and only an hour and half from the small village of Ollantaytambo. We wanted to take the train from there because it was considerably cheaper and we heard the village is worth a visit due to it's large Inca ruins. Ok.
To see Macchu Picchu before all the tourists arrive along with the walkers on the Inca trail you have to stop overnight at Aguas Calientes, the last town, to get an early bus to the top of the mountain. Again ok.
Right let's go. We take a taxi for half an hour to get to the bus station. Once the confusion of ticket buying is over we get on a bus to Urambamba for 2 hours. This stops randomly all over the middle of no-where to let people on an off on the rutted dirt road. Arriving in Urambamba we change immediately into a small combi mini-van with 18 other passengers crammed in. 30 more minutes on rough roads to get to Ollantaytambo. And still we've a way to go yet.
The village of Ollantaytambo is tiny but has a huge terraced set of walls rising above it in the mountainside. This is the site of an Inca victory over the Spanish. The Incas stood atop the terracing raining rocks, fire sticks and flooding the plateau below. It's an intricately carved set of terraces, mainly to enable the growing of crops on the steep cliffside, and walls which included houses and storage buildings as well as the obligatory temple thingy. A narrow path cut into the mountainside meanders precariously to a couple more huts before we take the steep steps down to the exit. It's hard work scaling hugely steep areas like this normally but we keep having to remind ourselves that it's much harder at this altitude.
You can see other buildings on an opposite mountain that have been built right on the edge of the steep cliff. It's insane that they even wanted to build this high up let alone actually achieving it.
After an excellent traditional wood-burning oven baked pizza we head to the train station. Our train is the cheaper night train so views are out of the question. We did see the incredibly expensive Hiram Bingham train, named after the first non-South American to discover Macchu Picchu as guided by a local boy in 1920 or there abouts. It's a very flash train and clearly not for the likes of us!
We also saw the comical sight of a Volkswagon campervan converted into a mini-train roll by. It seems this acts as a line clearer, a large v-shaped metal guard on front to shift debris.
Our train arrives in Aguas Calientes(Spanish for hot waters) an hour and a half later. It arrives right in the middle of a street too. People eat in restaraunts either side, it seems the main road is also the train stop. Odd.
After avoiding the typical hostel sellers trying to get you into their flea ridden hovels we end up in a nice hostel on the main plaza. Aguas Calientes gets a complete slating in Lonely Planet for being overpriced and ugly but it didn't seem too bad.
It's pitch black away from the main streets, of which there's about 3, but we walk over a footbridge arched over very loud gushing water. It's at this moment we notice we're stood at the foot of two very large dome shadows, aka mountains. One of them is Macchu Picchu mountain itself, I reckon.
Two very early starts follow, a 5am wake-up to buy entrance tickets and catch one of the first buses up the winding dirt road to Macchu Picchu through a tropical setting. Aguas Calientes in daylight was completley different. The main square is ok but with mainly unfinished rough looking buildings. Still, there are huge lush green mountains towering over the place with a smouldering early morning mist clinging to the trees as it climbs up them. It does look magical up there.
Shall we get to what we came for?
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